Bill's Corner: I was just SURE the Nobel Prize for big turtles was in the bag!

Yesterday I stepped out of the shop and saw a big-old turtle walking across the grass toward the pond. I see a lot of box turtles, smooth shelled green pond turtles, and snapping turtles around the shop...they wander up to lay their eggs in the sandy section at the end of the building...and figured that this one was just another snapping turtle. I tend to stay pretty clear of them but this one looked different so I decided to get a closer look.

It was pretty clear that he (or was it a she?) wasn't a snapping turtle from a distance because he pulled his head and tail completely into his shell prett quickly...snapping turtles can't do that. It looked a lot like a painted turtle but was WAY bigger than any one I'd seen...he was at least 12" long and I'd never seen a painted turtle over 6" long. I figured I had discovered the world's biggest painted turtle...fame and fortune were just around the corner!

Some research on the internet started to make me realize that it probably wasn't a painted turtle...it was just too big. The records showed them growing to 7.2". Now I could imagine maybe finding one 8" long...that's believable... but almost 13" long was just too unlikely. My neighbor that works for the Virginia Institute for Marine Sciences (VIMS) guessed that it was most likely a Cooter, maybe a Northern Red-Bellied Cooter. It turns out that Cooters grow much bigger than the one I found so my hopes for the Nobel Prize for big turtles were dashed, but it was still pretty neat to see.